We help organisations set, measure and achieve their objectives using metrics – the language and methods of measurement.

If done properly, the process of measurement forces organisations to focus on their objectives and demonstrate how they add value. It provides evidence to support decision-making and helps organisations to track and communicate progress.

“If we are going to make a transition to a sustainable society we have to get away from using these one dimensional metrics and start looking at the complexity of human life within a living environment … And when we start measuring those things and counting them and paying attention to them, then we’ll certainly find ways of supporting them and increasing them. But as long as we ignore them and only look at dollars, then of course, nature really doesn’t count.”

Richard Heinburg, Author of Peak Everything

Our work

Sustainability is complex. We often use guiding frameworks such as the Five Capitals and 12 features of the Natural Step to help develop meaningful metrics.

We work with our partners in a wide range of interlinking areas, for example:

Decision making toolkits
A sustainability decision-making toolkit applies a common set of principles to different stages of a project.

We helped Unilever’s R&D team embed carbon into the product development process by creating carbon appraisal metrics which strike the right balance between simplicity and completeness.  All new Unilever products now pass through this carbon appraisal stage.

The Streamlined Life Cycle Analysis (SLCA) tool assesses products at each life cycle stage.

The following diagram shows how different decision making tools are useful at different stages of a project:

Product Assessment
We helped Dulux develop an Environmental Impact Analyser for assessing critical environmental impacts during the lifecycle of paint. Dulux has used this to launch a range of paint with significantly lower impacts. 

Carbon Accounting
We helped SWRDA (South West Regional Development Agency) understand what a Carbon Neutral South West region would look like. This involved identifying and benchmarking both the direct and, more significantly, indirect carbon impacts arising from SWRDA’s activities.

News

We are currently working on the Sustainable Cities Index 2009. Read about the 2008 Index.

Contacts

David Aeron-Thomas
James Taplin